Former Shas leader Aryeh Deri cannot run for mayor of Jerusalem this year, due to his conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude, the Jerusalem District Court ruled yesterday.

The former Shas chairman refrained yesterday from saying whether he would support the candidacy of Meir Porush, who was the Haredi community's chosen candidate before Deri announced his interest in entering the race.

"I am a Haredi, who abides by the laws of the Torah," Deri said.

"All my life, I was taught to listen to the Torah sages, and that is also how I educated an entire generation.

I will listen to whatever the rabbis tell me regarding whether to support anyone, and whom."

Senior leaders from Agudath Israel and Degel Hatorah, which together make up United Torah Judaism, met Sunday night and decided to support the former's candidate, MK Meir Porush, in the November 11 election.

Nevertheless, there were contradictory reports after the meeting about whether it was decided that all the Haredi parties would support Porush for mayor, or only whether to support him as the head of the UTJ list for the city council.

Although Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef will have the final word, Aryeh Deri's return to Shas is looking more likely as chances of his being able to run for Jerusalem mayor ebb, Shas sources said Sunday.

"If elections are postponed until Aryeh can legally be elected [July 2009] the pressure on Shas to bring him back will be almost unbearable," a Shas source said.

"On the other hand if elections are called before Aryeh can return to politics it would be difficult to imagine seeing him returning to Shas after the elections."

It is important that we maintain our support for religious circles because they are maintaining our traditions.

They have kept them over the centuries for us, and I think that it is quite a difficult life they have.

They are the true representatives of the Jewish culture.

We have a duty to protect their style of life, but they cannot take care of others' interests.

For example, how can Mr. [Meir] Porush, whom I respect, take into account the interests of the Christian community?

Mr. Barkat is a very positive man, but he cannot obtain this either.

We don't have time to lose. I believe that only I have the charisma necessary for that task. The Israeli nation [Am Yisrael] is divided in many groups, and Jewish tradition is the only thing that unites us.

A wave of irate protest silenced a Jews for Jesus radio campaign last week on a local radio station in the North.

The slogan of the radio campaign is "Yeshu [a derogatory form of Jesus] equals Yeshua [accent on penultimate syllable] equals yeshua [accent on the last syllable]."

In three different versions of the ad, ethnically identifiable Israeli Jewish voices - one Russian, one Moroccan and one haredi Ashkenazi - express surprise at being told that Jesus is equivalent to redemption.

At the end of the ad a voice-over says, "Confused? Call for more information," and provides a phone number.

The radio ad is part of larger campaign, directly primarily at the North, that includes full-page ads in the weekend editions of Ma'ariv and Yisrael Hayom, two Hebrew dailies.

In addition, Jews for Jesus activists sporting T-shirts and passing out literature have been active in recent days in the North, including Nahariya, Kiryat Shmona and the Haifa area.

According to members of Jews for Jesus, the municipalities of Tiberias and Karmiel each took down a large-screen Jews-for-Jesus ad located at prominent intersections.

The first Jew to address a Vatican synod on Monday told the gathering that Jews "cannot forgive and forget" that some major religious leaders during World War II did not speak out against the Holocaust.

Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen's words, spoken in the presence of Pope Benedict, were a clear reference to wartime Pope Pius XII, who many Jews say did not do enough to help them.

Twenty-five-year-old Jose Portuondo-Wilson is wondering what it takes to prove to the government that he is Jewish.

Eighteen months after his Orthodox conversion in Chicago, he is resorting to a High Court of Justice petition to force Interior Ministry bureaucrats to approve his aliya

…Four months after the second application, on August 21, Portuondo-Wilson received official notice that his aliya was denied by the Interior Ministry. The reason: the rabbinical court that performed his conversion was "unrecognized."

"I don't care whether the Israeli Rabbinate recognizes my conversion or not, but I don't want them to have a monopoly over who can convert," Lopatin said.

"We should take the monopoly away from them. Like with [kashrut supervision], there are different supervisions."

An Interior Ministry spokesman would not comment on the specific case, but said rabbinical courts abroad were recognized only if they appeared on a list kept by the Conversion Authority in the Prime Minister's Office.

…In the meantime, [Portuondo-Wilson] is contemplating rabbinical school. He may become the first Orthodox rabbi in history to be denied aliya, he notes with humor.

Out of concern that Israel will be labeled a proselytizing nation, the Justice Ministry this week asked Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar to stop converting citizens of foreign countries. But Amar is proving reluctant to do so.

In a meeting on Sunday, attorney Harel Goldberg of the Consultation and Legislation Department in the Justice Ministry requested that Amar halt these conversions.

Goldberg had sent a letter to Amar more than a month ago warning of the legal problems involved with the practice.

…If the conversion is part of the naturalization process to become Israeli, then it is less problematic from a legal perspective.

But Amar has presided over dozens of conversions of people who came here solely to be converted, and who then returned to their countries as Jews.

He was a huge television star, an actor, and a popular radio broadcaster, but Andrew Lim always felt as though something was missing. Then, one day, he saw the light – in Judaism.

Lim knew almost nothing about Judaism until he happened to arrive in Israel as part of a sight-seeing tour, in order to witness firsthand the sights he had read of so many times in the New Testament.

…Lim, or Eliyahu Abraham as he is now called in Hebrew, converted to Judaism in Australia together with his wife and children.

He kept his day job – a radio broadcaster – and in his free time runs his local Beit Chabad's Torah studies. He dreams of coming to Israel once again, this time with his family, to see where it all began.

In their struggle to stem the slaughter of countless chickens during theYom Kippur ritual of Kapparot (atonements), activists of Let Live (Latet Lihyot), an animal rights group, are planning to file animal abuse complaints with police against those who carry out the ritual.

The head of the movement, Attorney Reuven Ladiansky, said that "there is a better alternative in giving money to the poor, and sparing the animals. According to the laws of the State, no animal may be slaughtered outside of a slaughter house."

Last Yom Kippur, I checked my watch to measure the exact time: Forty-five minutes of moderate walking, no more, to get from one end of the city to the other.

…How fortunate we are in Tel Aviv: We have Yom Kippur. Last year, on Yom Kippur, carbon monoxide levels fell from 205 parts per billion, on the day prior to the holiday, to just 2 parts per billion at its height - a phenomenon unmatched anywhere in the world.

And pollution isn't the only thing that's reduced. So is stress and rushing around and grim purposefulness.

…But this year one may also wander the streets in a kind of protest. For Yom Kippur alone is not sufficient to atone for the sins between man and place; but one can at least get out there and make a start.

A special advanced study group is being held at the Beersheba Religious Council for the first time: During the Days of Awe (betweenRosh HashanaandYom Kippur), synagogue representatives are learning how to blow a shofar, the horn sounded during special prayers.

Amor made it clear that "as far as the Chief Rabbinate and the Religious Council are concerned, those who don't take part in the study group will not be authorized to blow the shofar."

Sima Zelmanov, principal of the Bais Chana Chabad High School in Tzfas, and grandmother of seven, gave birth recently to her nineteenth child a week after marrying off her sixth child.

In doing so, Mrs. Zelmanov, 47, bore an uncle to her grandchildren, the oldest of whom is four. Mrs. Zelmanov is in the unique situation of having both a five-year-old daughter and this four-year-old grandson.

“They are good friends,” Mrs. Zelmanov told Mishpacha a day before the bris.

Sima, who has been married for 27 years, is the principal of the city’s Chabad high school for girls. Her eldest child, a son, is 26. Six of the couple’s children are married.

Sima and her husband are waiting for the birth of their eighth grandchild due next month.

Rabbi Gilad Kariv, of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, a leading Reform group, connected the rally to the Fast of Gedalia – which commences today.

"Our coming together here on this day is not fortuitous.

The Fast of Gedalia is the only Jewish holy day that does not center on foreign enemies, but rather on domestic actions," said Kariv, adding that it was imperative to learn from the past.

"We are here to warn that if we do not have the presence of mind to stop the violent zealots, we will find ourselves in the same situation the Jews were after the destruction (of the first Temple in Jerusalem) following the murder of Gedalia son of Achikam, or alternately, where Israeli society was 12 years ago after the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin."

Former Labor Party minister Ephraim Sneh unveiled an ambitious and provocative platformfor his new Israel Hazaka Party atan eventwith some 200 supporters in Tel Aviv on Sunday night.

Theplatformon matters of religion and state, which was written by former Shinui MK Erella Golan, calls for equating all the Jewish religious streams in the law and granting full rights to everyone who arrived by the Law of Return without the need to convert to Judaism.

"In my view, if someone's mother is gentile, but he served three years in the Golani Brigade, he doesn't need a religious procedure to become an Israeli with full rights," Sneh said.

The Israel Religious Action Center is circulating a petition calling on the State of Israel to immediately recognize and pay the salary of Rabbi Miri Gold, who serves as the spiritual leader ofBirkat Shalom, a Progressive congregation at Kibbutz Gezer, half-way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

It is also calling on the state to do the same for all of her non-Orthodox peers, and to provide equal funding for all streams of Judaism.

So far, only Orthodox rabbis receive government salaries for jobs such as pulpit work, officiating at weddings and burials, andkashrutsupervision.

A high school in the central city of Modiin forbade a student to bringing his phylacteries onto school grounds, threatening to expel him.

…The high school principal refused to respond and directed us to the Modiin Municipality's spokesperson, who said that "nothing is stopping those who wish to put on tefillin at the school privately and personally.

The student was asked not to bring his tefillin to school and to persuade others to join him."

Kibbutz Nachshonim is one of around 250 venues across Israel where the Orthodox organization, Tzohar, will send rabbis and volunteers for Yom Kippur services in an effort to confront the antipathy that many secular Israelis have toward Orthodoxy.

…For Yom Kippur, Tzohar’s program is known as Praying Together, and Tzohar expects to offer it to 50,000 people this year — double the number from just five years ago.

The services, which are run by some 2,000 rabbis, yeshiva and seminary students, and young couples recruited by Tzohar, are informal and, most importantly, free of charge.

Tel Aviv'sAlma Home for Hebrew Culture is organizing an alternativeslichotevent tonight at the Wohl Amphitheater in Yarkon Park on Thursday.

The evening of study and music, held in the open under the autumn night sky, offers a mixture of traditional and modern liturgy with Hebrew songs of introspection and yearning.

…Calderon notes that, over the past decade, "Israelis who do not define themselves as 'religious' and for whom the synagogue does not play a central role in their lives, have returned to the custom of slichot - prayers of atonement.

This year's gathering will features lectures by Calderon ("The lure of the forbidden - on the nature of sin in Talmudic stories") and Yair Lapid ("Jacob and Esau - the forgiveness that never was"), and live music by Abate, Shem Tov Levy and Rona Kenan, performing traditional and modern arrangements of songs of prayer and liturgy.

The Hadash movement on Thursday presented its first ever Arab list for the upcoming municipal elections Carmiel, vowing to work for the establishment of a church in the northern city, if needed.

…The third point is caring for the different groups which have special needs in Carmiel, like Christian new immigrants, Arabs in the city and the freedom of religion and culture."

"There are thousands of Christians living in the city of Carmiel in underground conditions without freedom of religion and ritual, and it's about time they get this right to freedom as all other religions in the country."

Will you work to build a church in the city?

"If needed, we'll definitely want to build a church and focus on the celebration of Christian holidays in the city.

We want life in Carmiel to be kind to people of other religions, alongside cooperation and coexistence with the Jewish population in the city.

The Netanya Rabbinical Court recently took the unusual step of hiring a firm ofprivate detectivesrecently to track down a husband who disappeared15 yearsago, leaving his estranged wife an "aguna", reportswww.mynet.co.il

And the rabbinate's efforts proved successful.

The husband was eventually found in Beersheba, from where, with the help of police, he was brought back to Netanya to givethe womana divorce.

One of the key initiatives for change is the program for theAlternative Beit Din, a plan in collaboration between Mavoi Satum, Kolech, and Neemanei Torah Va’avodah to start a religious court that is outside of the state bureaucratic apparatus.

“We need a system that is not just outside the Beit Din but also has a whole different way of thinking – an openness, tolerance, and an understanding of modern society,” said Kahana Dror.

Occasionally, due to circumstances beyond their control, some public figures break out of their roles as run-of-the-mill institutional heads and become an embodiment of a cause.

That is precisely what happened to Rabbi Haim Druckman, outgoing head of the NationalConversionAuthority.

Druckman's nearly overnight metamorphosis into the darling of religious Zionism was the direct result of an unprecedented attack launched on him by Rabbi Avraham Sherman, a member of the High Rabbinical Court.

ThePosthas learned that no Diaspora-related issues, including questions of religion and state, have been raised in the current coalition negotiations.

ThePosthas learned, however, of a meeting Monday morning between Yehezkel and the part-time Diaspora AffairsMinisterIsaac Herzog (whose primary portfolio is Welfare and Social Services) at which the two will discuss fashioning a new Diaspora Affairs Ministry.

The new Diaspora affairsminister, under a plan conceived in the Prime Minister's Office some three months ago, would combine many of these functions - combating anti-Semitism, promoting Jewish identity inside and out of Israel, managing Masa and other agencies, and the day-to-day connection to the Diaspora - into one permanent cabinet-level position.

Protests at abortion clinics leap to mind; I've held signs, silently, as the more vocal among the anti-abortion activists howled and shouted the rosary, the volume of their clamor matching the depth of their conviction.

But I’d never been screamed at like this before. And this time, I was the one trying to pray.

…This particular service was the monthly gathering put together byWomen of the Wall (WOW), an interdenominational group that has fought since 1988 in courts and in situ to allow women to pray as a group at the Kotel, wearing tallitot, and handling, being called to, and reading from Torah.

Israelis in growing numbers, including the Orthodox, are choosing to spend Yom Kippur in hotels and inns.

A Haaretz study shows that resort villages in the Galilee and the Golan Heights which will be open on the Day of Atonement this Wednesday night and Thursday are reporting an average of 60 percent occupancy.

A new phenomenon has emerged during the penitential prayers held in the southern city of Kiryat Gat after midnight:

Young girls arrive in masses at the synagogues' women's gallery, and while seeking forgiveness for sins they committed over the past year, they search for potential mates among at the young men praying at the temple.

Meanwhile, the boys appear to cooperate, many of them telling of dates which take place at the end of the prayers.

Israel'sChief Rabbi Yona Metzger has called on defendants going before the bench to "stop sporting a kippa just for show."

"I cannot judge someone's heart," said Rabbi Metzger.

"If someone has committed a crime and truly wished to repent, it is, by all means, the right thing to do; but this new thing we're seeing, where killers are arrested and then they wear a kippa when appearing before the judge, is despicable.

"It is an abuse of religion and a complete disregard of the judges' intelligence," he said.

The end of shmita - the sabbatical year during which, according to Jewish law, the land must lie fallow - was marked by a rare event in Jewish communities around the world: the signing of a prozbul, a document that enables loans to be collected even though all debts are supposed to be forgiven during shmita.

…Though the commandment of doing away with debts is in fact null and void, this year, certain members of the religious Zionist movement tried to "revive" it.

The Torah and Land Institute, along with the Pa'amonim charitable association, conducted a national campaign over the past few weeks to collect money from the public as "loans."

Interest in the event, which had to be expanded after hundreds more than expected registered for it, reflects a growing curiosity among immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union about their Jewish heritage.

Almost 20 years since the historic immigration of some 1 million Jews to Israel began, immigrants both old and young are examining their Jewish identity as they try to make sense of their place in the Jewish state.

Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar has harsh words for Israeli society, particularly the ultra-Orthodox community, in regards to its treatment of Russian Jews who immigrated to Israel.

…Lazar says that the reason for the failure of Russian integration is the fact that the immigrants were not prepared for their new lives, as well as the cold shoulder they got from the haredi community.

This, he said, pushed them into the embrace of Israel's secular public.

…"Even the gentiles understand that religion is not meant to be divisive, and it's a shame that not all Jews understand this.

The official recognition helps our struggle against Reform and Conservative sects, who seek to take over Judaism."

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, received an annual salary of $824,000 last year, according to a tax return that the nonprofit organization filed in the United States.

According to the tax return, the IFCJ raised $75 million in 2007, out of which it distributed some $42 million in donations to various programs and paid $30 million in wages and administrative expenses.

An IFCJ spokesman in Chicago told Haaretz:

"Rabbi Eckstein's wages were just a little more than $400,000. Another sum of $400,000 was put into a pension fund for him, because until now, no pension allocations had been made for him.

In light of this, his salary is reasonable for an American charity of this magnitude.

We have an independent board of trustees that sets Rabbi Eckstein's wages according to the accepted norms for large Jewish organizations in the U.S."